Kingdom Trails: Trip Report

Well, I don't really have too much to say about the Kingdom Trails, except for this: If you have never been, and you live in the East and ride bikes (any bikes - road, mountain, beach cruiser), you should definitely plan a trip. The trails aren't difficult (the hardest trail - Jaw - wasn't open). We were saying how the Black Trails there are easier than the Blue Trails at SMBA (which we rode today - getting completely wrecked by mosquitoes).

Our game plan for the first day (Saturday) was to mimic the day that Ace and I spent there last year. We rode our favorites from that day - Tap and Die, Webs, Old Webs (with an important stop at the cookie hut on top). In addition, we rode a bunch of trails that we never got to on the front side Pines, Cat Box Hill, Knob, Riverwood and Kitchel (which was a super cool downhill run with huge banked turns, airs, and drop offs) . All in all, we put in about 5 hours of climbing, cruising, coasting, and cookies.

The second day, we were not as pumped to get out there.  We had ridden hard all day (a lot harder than last year - extra people + better fitness = more saddle time).  Plus, the weather was kind of iffy (overcast with rumbles of thunder in the distance).  We talked about taking the day off, but we decided to press on - it was a good thing we did.  We rode Pound Cake all the way out to Coronary Bypass (not possible the first day because of an enormous group in front of us on Pound Cake).  After that, we did the Pastore Point loop, which made for some good photo ops above the river.

Then, after Webs, River Run, and a climb up the switchbacks of Old Webs, we took a much needed cookie break.

We cruised down the fun part of Old Webs after we heard how great Sidewinder was - from multiple people.   They were right.  It was my favorite trail of the day - a bigger scale version of Halfpipe at Pine Hill Park.  After the climb back up to the road (we finally figured out that we like climbing on singletrack a lot better than climbing on fire roads), we dropped back down the other side.

We were pretty beat after a nice singletrack run on Culvert Cut, so we cruised through Maple Tapping lines back to the top of Kitchel.  We were going to make one final epic helmet cam movie from the top, but my batteries died.  After some ice cream in town and a quick battery change, we fooled around on the pump track for a while, but our legs were pretty shot.

All in all, we did a little under 10 hours of riding for the two days, camped for 3 nights in a car trailer, ate 3 maple squares, 2 whoopie pies, garlic knots, pizza, quesadillas, and about 20 gu packets.  We had a fantastic time, and now have great stories to tell, and funny times to reference.  I've got one more video to share.  Nicely edited, more material, and music that hasn't been yanked - It was made by our friend Jared (the guy getting air in the first picture and getting whoopie pies in the "Market Cafe" picture). Enjoy: